2022-07-18 16:26:41The driver restarted the bus’s self-driving systems. With sloth-slowness, the bus dragged itself from the station, leaving Jaxton behind. As they did, Jaxton pulled himself up from the sidewalk, a glaring of pure hatred burning in his eyes. Just before the bus turned a corner, Devon saw Jaxton fish out his phone from his pocket and snap a picture.
“Guess his hand was fine after all,” Devon said.
Adrenaline rushed from his body, and Devon suddenly felt exhausted. His legs shook, and he had an odd craving for ice cream—nothing fancy, just a simple ice cream with some chocolate coating. Even one of the fake ones would do. Sadly, there wouldn’t be any ice cream chances for a good few hours.He made he was back to his seat, his duffel bag jammed into the footrest space. Next to him sat the middle-aged woman dabbing at her face with a wet washcloth that filled the seats with an overpowering scent of lemon sherbet.
“My goodness,” began the middle-aged lady. “That is definitely going into the top five craziest things that ever happened to me on a bus.”
“You mean there’s worse?” Devon asked.
“Oh honey,” the middle-aged lady said smirking as she placed the used wet-wipe in her purse. “oh, my sweet summer child. You have no idea. First off, there weren’t any cats involved.”
Devon nodded. “I mean, cats don’t sound so bad.”
She snorted. “Well this was in fact a 40-something year old man”
“… uh… what?”
“I mean, I ain’t about to judge folk for following their truth, but when he starting doing his 'litter-box’ in the aisle and insisting that the poor driver clean it up—“
She paused. “You know what? Before any other strange nonsense happens today, why don’t we introduce ourselves first? Carla Bright.” She stuck out her hand for a handshake.
“Devon Tomson. No ‘H’, No ‘P’”
“Well, it is a pleasure to meet you Devon Tomson No-H-No-P. And might I say, that is a lovely hat that you’ve got on there!”
Devon beamed.
“Naw… it’s just for a stupid convention...” He rubbed at the back of his head, feeling the leather and the feather between his fingers.
Carla’s face grew serious. “Why would you say that? It’s your hat! It’s your convention! Why would you say it’s stupid?”
Devon leaned back and sighed. Before he knew it, he was retelling the whole story of his day—the fight with Momma, how he got kicked out of the house for not wanting to return the hat, the fight with Jaxton and his goons at the bus stop… the more he told the story, the more ridiculous the whole thing seemed, all because of a stupid hat.
“This is all I got left.” Devon laughed, but tears gathered in his eyes. He wiped them away—Momma always told him it wasn’t becoming of men to cry in public. “It’s been like this ever since I was a kid. Anytime I try to… I don’t know… do something—"
“You mean like get a hobby?”
“Yeah, that. Anytime I start up a… a hobby or something, I always end up having to give it up. Momma’s like “oh, it’s too expensive” or “oh, Neveah doesn’t like it” or “oh, it’s too dangerous, oh takes up too much time away from home”… meanwhile Neveah goes off and does whatever she wants.
“Well, what does your father think?”
Devon coughed.
“He’s not here anymore.” Devon found it hard to look at Carla and stared out the window to avoid her gaze.
Silence filled the bus for a few terrible moments. Devon almost wished that the bus alarm would go off just so something else would fill in the painful, dead air.
Carla sighed.
“You know, Devon, we’re all people, and people are not perfect. I am by no means perfect either. Very, very imperfect, actually. This is just a part of life—but we grow and overcome our imperfections. Did you ever read M.L. Robinson’s “The Four Fires?”
“No,” Devon said. “I heard the TV show was really bad.”
“Oh, it’s awful. Terrible stuff. Shame that’s what most people know it for. Anyway—I see a lot of myself, or how I used to be, in how your mother is acting now. It took some reading, and a whole lot of therapy, to get me to accept just how awful I was acting, even if I believed what I did was right. Now I don’t know your circumstances of your family, and I don’t mean to pry into the life of a stranger… but if I had to guess, I think your mother knows that your sister is a handful, to put it mildly. But with your father…erm… out of the picture, she’s trying to keep the family together as much as she can.”
“But then why’d she kick me out?” Devon’s voice cracked. His eyes itched and swelled. He pulled the troublesome hat from his head, bunched it in a fist. The honking of passing traffic would make the perfect cover to hide the patter of falling tears.
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Chapter 52
His room had been cancelled. Just like that. No warning, no notice. At the snap of Marc’s fingers, Devon had been unceremoniously tossed out of a Convention that he literally gave up his family to attend. Devon stared at Marc for a while. Then, he laughed. He laughed quietly, then he laughed loudly, cackling, until he had no more breath in him. And still he laughed. This had been, by far, the most ridiculous weekend in Devon’s entire life. He had given up his family in a moment of anger, suffered assault and insult nearly daily, only to befriend some kind of foreign royalty who, while defending his newfound friend, had sacrificed the only housing he would have for the foreseeable future. Ridiculous! His life had become a joke, some absurd and wild story written by a mad idiot. This was a weekend that would define the rest of his life, and it all had just been so unbelievably stupid. Meanwhile, Marc looked as though he were about to leap out of the Executive Lounge window from shee
Chapter 51
Things were getting out of hand. Zayin needed to think quickly; his Prince was going to start digging himself into a deep and terribly expensive hole. Yes, Ali had certain entitlements to his family’s wealth…in theory. But Ali had never tapped into his family’s wealth before—Zayin wasn’t even sure that he could. It was a poorly kept secret that more than one relative had access to Ali’s accounts…including Cousin Sayid. To his shame, Zayin was quietly praying that there was not enough left to embarrass the Prince. He never thought that he would ever wish for relatives to embezzle the Prince’s funds. Even with his Aunts and Cousin Sayid dipping into his funds, Ali’s personal wealth was enough that he could make serious trouble for himself, as well as the Kingdom. And with the stone-set fury on Ali’s face, trouble would come. Perhaps the key to solving the trouble lay in Ali’s ‘brother’. “You.” He pointed at Devon and spoke in English. “Come with me, please.”Quietly, Devon complied.
Chapter 50
It was not the strangest occurrence to ever happen, but it was one of the strangest that had ever happen to Zayin.He stood nearly speechless as Marc, a hotel functionary, sputtered and nearly fell down on his knees trying to explain to Ali how all of this had been an enormous mistake. There had been in Marc’s words, ‘a deep and serious cultural miscommunication that New Hudson Convention Center will work tirelessly to reconcile’. It was ten minutes of this kind of diplomatic nonsense, and Zayin had to admit that he was doing quite well with it. In another life, and with another passport, Marc would have made a great presenter for one of the old State Television channels. More amusing still was, for the first time since knowing him, Ali acted like a prince. This was the greatest shock. Zayin was confident in this assessment—that Ali would be easily brushed aside by his more competent cousins and tossed out of Zhabaiye public life. Cousin Sayid would place him on a farm in the middle
Chapter 49
Since the construction of the New Hudson Convention Center, there had never been a moment quite what Marc Abramov experienced in that Executive Lounge. Since its actual opening some twenty years prior, there had never been so many people silenced all at once with just a few short words. Time seemed to freeze and Marc’s armhairs stood straight on their ends. The VIP…more like the VVIP in fact…was expecting an answer. Why did Marc make the VIP’s brother cry?He clasped his hands and began, “Well—“ Well what? Nothing. The words caught in his throat. Something about the young man’s look—and he barely registered as a man at all—struck him with a sense of absolute terror. The VIP’s gaze encompassed his entire being, utterly and completely, as though he were no more than a fixture of the room. Marc had a sudden, curious idea that there was a sword hanging over his neck. And if he did not speak very, very carefully, that sword would drop and lop his head clean off from his body. There
Chapter 48
Devon sat crosslegged on the floor, squishing his hunter’s hat for comfort. He stared at a spot of carpet, trying to drown out the sounds of the frightening-looking man screaming at Ali. Devon could piece together that the goons all worked for him—some of them were half in costume, others dressed like regular folk. A few wore golden watches. Were they thugs? If so, they weren’t like any gang members that Devon had ever seen, and New Hudson was unfortunately filled with those. These men looked too clean-cut. They didn’t have the casual swagger of the gangs he knew, and other than a little bit of rough-handling on the way to the top-floor lounge, they hadn’t been beaten. Furthermore, gang attacks usually don’t take this long, and by this point they had been sitting in the lounge for twenty minutes. Meanwhile, Ali had begun to shout at the man who kidnapped him. That was the strangest part of all of this--when Ali shouted, the man who kidnapped them listened. And so did his goons. At
Chapter 47
Zayin’s head throbbed. He wished, more than he’d ever wished for anything in his life, that he could wake up back home, in Al-Zhabaiye. He missed his coffee, he missed his 17th story view of the desert, he missed the smell of the cedar paneling of his building’s elevator. All these little things he missed, many of which he had not appreciated before. His head ached until the pain seeped down into his shoulders. So tense were all his muscles that even the slightest movement ached. And it was well to be tense, because his ward, the PRINCE OF AL-ZHABAIYE HIMSELF, chose to behave like a childish idiot. Now Zayin and his security team occupied the hotel’s Executive Lounge, where they had extradited the Prince from a possible attempt on his life. The Prince sat on the couch with his head in his hands, refusing to look at or speak to anyone. One of his security team had thoughtfully prepared a plate of dried fruit and cheese. The plate sat in front of the Prince, untouched. Good. Maybe the
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